


a darkness that has teeth

by WelcomeToTheBadlands



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Psychics/Psionics, Anger Management, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Childhood Friends, Childhood Trauma, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, I'm Bad At Summaries, Mutual Pining, Paranormal, Psychic Abilities, Secret Crush, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Soft Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23428708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WelcomeToTheBadlands/pseuds/WelcomeToTheBadlands
Summary: Ever since Rey's been little, she's been able to see the paranormal. No one's ever said they believed her except for her best friend, Ben Solo.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 28
Kudos: 63





	1. Chapter 1

Some children are doomed from the moment that they’re born, and Rey was one of them. Before she was born, she could say that her family history was loaded, her ancestors went back all the way to the Salem Witch Trials and she was born in New Orleans, where spirits roamed the streets. After that, her mother died. It was some sort of accident with mysterious circumstances, some people said that it was a suicide though. Her father, well he was in the wind long before she had even come by. Later, Rey had a dream that he was alone in an alley shoving needles into his skin. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew that he wasn’t addicted to what he was doing, he was just trying to go quicker. Rey was doomed before she was born, but when she came, she didn’t know it. She was put in the foster system and moved state to state to state and finally made it back to Massachusetts.

She didn’t remember what life was like when she was a baby, no one did. But sometimes she had dreams, about parents who thought she was difficult, that would toss her back into the system. She would get traded like cards in a trading deck. She would tell herself later when she was old enough to remember and speak that that was okay, people got overwhelmed by things. She got overwhelmed by things. Rey was one of those kids that felt emotions so intensely, so deeply that it would just spill out of her like water overflowing from a sink.

The first time that Rey saw a dead person, she was four years old and she didn’t know what was happening. She just saw a girl with skin that was whiter than white, but not like a pearl, it was something else that was gross and mottled, and she looked so scared, so scared. Rey didn’t know what was happening, she could barely form the right thoughts over thinking about TV shows and characters and that kind of thing. The most that Rey could ask her was if she wanted to play together. She did. Her name was Lily. Lily was her only friend for about a year, and then she turned five. That’s when her foster parents noticed that she wasn’t sleeping, and she got moved again.

That home was different. There were things that she wanted to block out there and she did, and then she moved, and she pretended like nothing happened. She learned how to bite her cheek and not scream when she woke up from nightmares, she learned that when she started to see things, she would try her best not to let people know that she was seeing things. And there was a lot of things that she began to see. There would be things that would crawl out from under bed, things that would scratch at her and tear her clothes and she didn’t know what to do.

These things didn’t just happen at home, they followed her everywhere that she went, and they followed her to school too. She was six when she started seeing ghosts and demons that would attach themselves to other people and suddenly the world got a lot louder. She would be in class and just start crying. It was never loud, she didn’t like being loud, didn’t like being a burden, but tears would slip down her face and she would try and cover her face with her hair as she did her work. Sometimes when she had to use pen or marker the words that she would write would bleed together and she would shake like a leaf.

The teacher often called attention to it, even if Rey didn’t want people to pay attention to her. Everyone thought that she was a child, and part of her wanted to explain that it wasn’t that, that there was more there to see but she was a smart person. She knew that people would call her crazy, so she tried not to. That didn’t stop the teacher from telling her parents that she needed to be looked at by a child psychologist. This was the first set of parents that didn’t gripe at her for making them spend money to get her a therapist. Rey never paid attention in therapy though, they always told her that everything that she saw was fake and treated her like she was stupid. She just wanted someone to tell her that she wasn’t crazy.

And that was when she met Ben Solo. The two of them were in different classes but they had the same recess and the same lunch. Neither of them really talked to each other, but both of them were the kids that didn’t have any friends. The difference was that Ben was the kid that would sit on a bench with a book or a comic and keep to himself and Rey was weaving flower crowns together out of dandelions and weeds and still trying to get people to like her, and failing. She wasn’t sure what compelled him to look his way on the playground one day, but she did. She thought that maybe she was tired of being rejected in terms of friendship and she saw him there and he was— _quiet._ Everyone else was so loud and everything about him was quiet.

There was nothing around him, all these things that she saw were nowhere near him and he was quiet. Rey found herself getting up and dusting woodchips off the back of her pants and walking over to him, and as she did all of the noise that was in her mind started to quiet and things weren’t bad and it was strange but she was happy.

It was then that she remembered that she actually had to talk to him. For a second, she thought about turning back but she didn’t. She sat on the bench right next to him and said, “I’m Rey.”

“I’m Ben,”

“You have really nice hair, Ben.” That was the second thing she noticed about him. His hair. It reminded her of ravens, her favorite bird.

“Thanks? You uh—have nice eyes?”

“Thanks,” She beamed with the biggest smile that a small child could muster and then told him that she was in need of a friend and it looked like he was in need of one too, so she would therefore be his friend from that moment forward. And the matter was settled. He just gave her a look, but he wasn’t mean, he just shrugged.

“Okay?”

“So, you’ll actually be my friend?”

“Yeah, sure. If you want.” It was settled from there. The two of them were friends. And Rey was strange, and she knew that but Ben didn’t ask her what was happening when she got lost and stared off into the distance, and he didn’t ask her why she would start crying out of the blue sometimes. He was just there, and he was quiet.

Sometimes he would draw her things. He learned that she liked flowers and reading so he asked her if she had ever heard of the myth of Persephone, how she stumbled into the Underworld and fell in love with Hades, even though she became the Queen of the Dead, she still had that innocence about her that made her bring about spring, and made her make flower crowns and just love life. He would draw Persephone for every once and a while when she was sad and that made her feel better. And he didn’t know that she could see yet, but for some reason he would always say that out of all the Greek Gods, she would probably be Persephone. “Or maybe Hestia,”

“Who’s Hestia?”

“She’s the nicest one out of everyone,” Ben said, “she didn’t like people fighting and just wanted peace. Plus she liked warm things like you,”

“How can you tell I like warm things?”

“You’re always wearing sweaters,”

“Well, yeah. I’m always cold.”

“I feel like Hestia would’ve been the same way,”

“How did you learn about all these Greek Gods?”

“I have a book about them, do you want to borrow it?” She nodded and he told her that he would have it for her the next day, and he did. Rey read the entire thing in one night, and even though she barely got any sleep she was excited to go to school with Ben. Because things were better.

Things were better now that she had a friend.


	2. Chapter 2

When Ben met Rey, he wasn’t sure what to think of her. She was—odd—to say the least, but he was never one to judge. It wasn’t like she was annoying or anything, she was just strange and so sensitive and too nice for her own good. She wanted everyone to be friends with her and thought that she could just do that by waltzing up to people and sitting down and declaring that they were friends, and while it worked with Ben it didn’t work that way with the rest of the world. It took a little bit of getting used to for him, wrapping his head around the fact that someone actually wanted to be his friend was kind of strange for him.

As a kid, Rey was smaller than most. She was so small that people found her easy to pick on and she would never, never say anything back or stand up for herself. Ben hated it. As a kid, Ben was taller than most of the kids around him, so he would always put himself between her and whoever was trying to tease her and they would call him names but that was okay, because at least they weren’t being mean to his friend.

After first grade, the two of them ended up in the same class. Ben remembered the first day of second grade, Rey squealed with glee when she saw him and then dragged him over to their table, showing them that the two of them had been put together on the seating chart. From there they only grew closer. Both Rey and Ben had trouble focusing on things, but Rey seemed to be better at hiding it when she wasn’t paying attention than Ben was. He hated staying in a seat and it was frustrating not being able to get up and move. He was often restless, but when the teacher would get after him Rey would squeeze his hand under the table for reassurance and that always seemed to calm him down.

Ben had always thought it was weird, because he hated when everyone else touched him. When Rey did though—it always just made him calm down. She just had that effect with him.

Rey though—sometimes she would get so overwhelmed by something and he wished that he could just squeeze her hand and let her know that she was going to be fine, but she would still cry and get so silent that it scared him. Rey, who was always so happy and making flower crowns, and talking about fairies, sometimes had so much sadness in her eyes that Ben thought that she just might down in it, and what was a seven year old to do about that other than worry?

One day, she asked him on the playground if he would ever leave her. “What do you mean?” He asked her. Because that was a weird question that seven-year old children didn’t ask each other, and at the time, he wasn’t really sure that he understood the weight of that sentence. Rey’s eyes looked so dark and heavy in that moment, and she bit her lip and shook her head.

“Never mind,”

“No, Rey. What do you mean?”

“I mean—a lot of people tell me that they aren’t going to leave me or they aren’t going to make me go away, and I was just wondering—are you going to keep being my friend?”

“Of course,” Ben said, there was no hesitation in his sentence either, “I like being your friend.” That seemed to make her feel better. Things didn’t really seem to get any weirder with Rey until fourth grade. She was a lot quieter than she usually was, and her clothes went from the light and floral stuff that she usually wore to a grey sweater and black jeans that she wore constantly. Ben could tell that there was something wrong with her. She started getting more sleepy in class and would get bags under her eyes, but she would never tell him what was wrong until a week before the last day of school.

Rey and Ben were sitting in the courtyard away from all the kids as they played, Rey started crying out of nowhere and put her head between her knees. “Rey?” Ben asked. “Rey? Are you okay?” It took her a minute to come back out of her shell and stare at him for a second. “You’re scaring me, what’s wrong?”

“I haven’t slept in three days,” She muttered.

“What?”

“Yeah,”

“That’s so long,”

“My head hurts,”

“Is that it?”

Rey was quiet for a minute before she shook her head to indicate that, no, that was not it. “What’s wrong?” Ben found himself repeating and Rey looked like she was going to cry again.

“You won’t believe me, my parents don’t believe me, so you won’t either.”

“Try me,” Ben told her. “What’s going on?” He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but he knew that he wasn’t expecting what came out of her mouth after that.

“You promise not to laugh at me?”

“I promise,”

“I see ghosts,” Ben did not laugh at Rey. He told her that he wouldn’t. But for a second, he couldn’t help but wonder if she thought she saw something but just had a really active imagination, or if she was lonely and her brain was coming up with things, or if ghosts were an actual real thing. His mother had told him from a young age that ghosts, demons, ghouls, and monsters were not real. That was something that he believed in to this day, but he looked at Rey and there was so much fear in her eyes. What was she afraid of? Judgement? Was she afraid that Ben would laugh at her? “You don’t believe me,” The sadness in her voice broke his heart, but before she could get up and leave the bench Ben caught her arm.

“Wait, no. I do? It’s just—ghosts are scary, so I didn’t know what to say. But I believe you, I believe you, I promise.” Rey sat back down on the bench and Ben let go of her.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” He told her, the one thing that he had learned rather quickly about Rey was that she didn’t lie about things. She told him herself that she was a horrible liar, and when they played two truths and a lie later that day, Ben had learned that she was right. She couldn’t lie to save her life. After Rey told him and he told her that he believed her, Rey seemed to calm down.

She wouldn’t cry as much, and she started wearing colorful things again. Ben forgot how much he had missed that. She talked about the ghosts sometimes too, when they were alone and no one else would hear them. Ben didn’t know what to think, because she would always describe them so vividly that it seemed impossible that she was making all of it up. And then for a year, she wasn’t there.

Ben didn’t know why, but his mother sat him down one evening to talk. “How are you doing, sweetie?” That was how he knew there was something wrong. His mother had a horrible poker face and when she was going to tell him about something bad, she always had the same expression. He didn’t want to sit down, because somehow, he knew that Leia was going to say something about Rey.

“I’m fine,” He said.

“Good, that’s good. You’re probably wondering—about Rey. Since she hasn’t been in class for the past few weeks since fifth grade started.” Ben didn’t say anything. “Well, um, her foster parents called and told us that she’s been checked into a facility for a month or two.”

“What?” Ben was too young to know what that meant, and he knew that his mother was going to explain it, but he already knew that it was going to be bad.

“She’s in a place to help people with uh—sicknesses.”

“She’s sick,”

“Not physically,” Leia said, “but mentally. She sees a lot of things that aren’t there, and her parents are just trying to get her help.”

“Will she be coming back?”

“Yes, she’ll be coming back.” Leia said. “But I think that we need to talk about you hanging out with her when she does. I just don’t think that it’s a good idea,”

“She’s my only friend,” Ben said.

“You can make other friends, it’s just—Rey has something wrong with her. In her head, and it can be a lot for someone and that isn’t your responsibility. It shouldn’t be your responsibility.”

“You’ve never even met Rey,”

“Ben—”

“She just has an overactive imagination, that’s all. She just sees things because she’s lonely. And she’s alone, all the time, like me. Not that you would know that,”

“Ben!”

“You’re fighting with dad, all the time. You never pay attention to me, and when you’re not fighting with dad, you’re at work. You know who’s been there for me, all the time? Rey has. I’m not going to stop hanging out with her just because you think that she’s weird, okay? You don’t get to make that decision when you’re barely in my life at all.”

“Ben!” He didn’t talk to his mother for two weeks after that. Even if she tried, he would just leave the room. Han told Leia to give him his space, but she never listened. Han would try and talk to him too, and he usually answered but it was always one- and two-word sentences. Never much more than that. 

It wasn’t until sixth grade that Rey and Ben had the same homeroom again, and when they saw each other Rey practically ran into Ben’s arms. “Hey,” She said, “haven’t seen you in a while.” She looked good, like she had actually slept and like she hadn’t cried in a while.

“I missed you,” He said.

“I missed you too,” Rey said, “I’m so glad that we have homeroom together.” The bell for one minute until class rang.

“Let’s go inside,” He told her. Rey nodded and the two of them seemed to have the same luck of having the same seats next to each other on the seating chart. They had two other classes together and Ben and Rey’s teachers soon learned that sitting them next to each other was a good idea.

Ben hated sitting still, and classrooms were a lot of that. Sitting still and then sitting and more sitting. He fidgeted more when Rey wasn’t there, she calmed him down and he did his work when she was right next to him. Whenever he felt like acting up, Rey would squeeze his hand and let him know that she was there. Sometimes it didn’t help and he got in trouble, and sometimes it did help and she smiled at him and the two of them had a good day.

Ben started coming over to Rey’s, he didn’t like being at home either. A lot of the times, her foster parents weren’t home. He would just go up to her room and the two of them would talk and do homework together. Rey didn’t talk about ghosts as much, but sometimes she would look off into the distance at something that Ben could not see, and his mother’s voice echoed in his head. He hated that, tried to forget it.

Ben never wanted to judge Rey for anything. He had his own issues and he never saw judgement in Rey’s eyes, ever. It was hard for him to listen, to pay attention and sit in his seat. It was hard for him to do a lot of things; Rey would be there for him. When he struggled with his notes, she was there helping him fix them, when he didn’t want to go home to his family, Rey was right there with him. She understood and she never judged him.

He was going to stick with Rey. As long as he could. Even if his parents didn’t approve.


	3. Chapter 3

They were in high school now and not much had changed in the time that had past, but Ben had gotten angrier since the eighth grade. Things were going on at home that he didn’t want to tell Rey about, and she was concerned but she didn’t ask, because she felt like she would be intruding if she did. They had all the same classes together, again. Which was a good thing, because it seemed while Ben had gotten angrier but all around less shy, Rey had retreated into her shell. She was nervous at any mention of having to get in front of the class and do something, nervous when she had to interact with other people, and when teachers forced her to do things without Ben she would get pale and tense up.

It didn’t seem to get any better when kids noticed that they could push her around and they would just—get away with it because she wouldn’t say anything. Rey didn’t stand up for herself, and Ben with all that anger and energy that he had nowhere to put, would always find himself between Rey and an asshole that was trying to take advantage of her. Sometimes, it would get him into a fight, and he’d end up in detention or a write up.

Today, the same thing happened. He had fought someone on his way to Rey’s house with her, ended up with a pretty scraped up knee and a few blows to the head. “What if you got a concussion?” Rey said.

“I didn’t get a concussion.” Ben told her. “I’m fine, Rey.”

“You didn’t need to do that,”

“He tried to hit you,”

“You still didn’t need to do that; I didn’t care and I was going to walk home with you anyways and now you’re hurt.” Ben didn’t tell her that his ankle was hurting too. The two of them walked home and Rey walked right past her foster parents with Ben in tow.

“What happened?”

“I fell,” Ben lied, and Rey pulled him up the stairs and into her bathroom and shut the door. Rey had saved up her allowance money just to get a first aid kit, because Ben got in fights that much. She was quiet as she applied some Neosporin on his knee and then put one of those square bandaids over it.

“Let me look at your head,” At this point, Ben had really shot up over the summer and while Rey and him were still just freshmen, Rey had only grown about an inch since eighth grade and it was hard for her to reach him. He smirked when she had to get up on her tiptoes and she struggled to contain a smile. “This would be a lot easier if you bent down.” He did and she giggled a little. “Asshole,”

“I know you love me,”

“Yeah, I do.” Her voice got real quiet for a second before she lightly tapped a bruise forming on his jaw. “That looks like it hurt.” He grimaced and nodded and Rey said, “I’m gonna get some ice. Take some Advil and go to my room, then we can work on homework.”

“Do we have to?”

“Ben,”

“Fine.”

It didn’t take Rey long to come back with the ice. She threw it to Ben and sat down in her desk chair. “You ready to study?”

“Not really,” Ben sighed, “can’t we just hang out?”

“Are you going home tonight or not?” Ben gave her an awkward smile and Rey sighed. “Okay, we can hang out.” She looked at her watch and then back at him. “For an hour, then we do homework, and then we can hang out more. That sound good?”

“Yeah,” He said, “that sounds really good.”

It turned out that an hour past a lot faster than Ben thought that it did, and that just sucked the life out of him. Rey was a lot better at anything school related than Ben was, but that wasn’t a surprised, Ben had always been stupid, and it just showed in his schoolwork. If he had said that in front of Rey though, she would have vehemently said it wasn’t true and reminded him that he was the one that helped her get better at writing essays, and that he was good in art too. But it didn’t take that much to be good at either of those two things, so it didn’t really mean much to him.

He was dropping art after this year anyways, he didn’t like being in that class with a teacher that was too strict and didn’t like him, and kids that seemed to just want to blow the entire year off. His father wanted him to get into football, but he didn’t want that either.

He didn’t even like football.

“Ben?”

“Yeah,” He didn’t even notice that Rey had been talking to him.

“Science notes?”

“Oh, right.” He got out his notes and started leafing through the pages until he found the unit that they were on. He was silent for a minute, just staring at them, he realized that he had no idea what he had even really written down on the page.

This is why he hated doing homework. He hated feeling like he was a dumbass. It took a second for Rey to notice, but she sat down next to him with an exact copy of her page of notes, written neatly with some highlight. Everything was spaced out more and neat. She taped the page in while he just sat there and said, “Hey, are you okay?”

“Just—I realized I forgot the lesson,”

“It was about DNA, polymerase and all that kind of stuff.”

“Oh,” That didn’t really help much, “they were talking about structure. Here, let me help.” Rey was better at this than his teachers were. When he would ask questions, he would always be marked as the stupid kid in class that had no idea what they were doing, especially when he did things like as for clarification on directions. Rey had the patience of a saint, and honestly, he had no idea why she never got annoyed with him when she was teaching him about stuff.

But it made sense when she taught it. She would be patient, let him ask questions, let him fidget around when he needed to and when they were done studying Rey put their journals aside and tackled him into her bed with a hug. “You did good today,” She told him.

“Yeah, right.” He rolled his eyes.

“Will you just take the compliment?”

He shrugged awkwardly and buried his face in her shoulder. “God, I’m so tired.” And hungry. He forgot when he had last eaten. He was in a good spot though, and Rey was right next to him, with her arms wrapped around his body, and Ben wanted to keep it like this for a little bit longer.

Peaceful. Quiet. There was nothing wrong going on. It was that way for about thirty minutes before Ben’s phone rang and he had to get up with a groan. It was his mother, “Hey, Ben. I’m home from work, I was just wondering when you were coming home from Rey’s.”

“I’d rather not,” There wasn’t even really a hello.

“Son, we do pay for your clothes and food and for the roof over your head, you are going to have to come home at some point.”

“Are you done yelling at dad for leaving for like four months again? Or are you going to do that again and not let me sleep? Besides, what’s the difference? It’s not like you actually pay attention to me when I come home.” Leia was silent on the other end of the phone. “I’ll be home on Friday; I just don’t want to be there right now.”

“Let the boy come home when he wants to come home,” Han said, “it’s not like he’s doing anything wrong if he wants to stay at his girlfriend’s house.” Ben rolled his eyes and hung up the phone before the two of them could start arguing on the other end. He turned around to Rey.

“Um—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” She nodded.

“You’re staying ‘till Thursday?”

“Yeah. If that’s okay,”

“That’s fine,” Rey said, “but you can’t just sleep on my beanbag the whole time. That’s bad for your back.”

“It’s really not that bad—”

“I have extra blankets and a sleeping bag.” She was silent for a minute before she said, “Or you can sleep in my bed with me?” He was silent too and could see her blushing. “Or not. Sleeping bag is better. We also have an air mattress. You don’t have to join us for dinner if you don’t want to but we’re having lasagna tonight if you want.”

“Lasagna sounds nice,”

“Okay,” Rey bit her lip. “You want to watch something,”

“Yeah,” Rey and Ben always went to the basement when they wanted to watch something. It doubled up as the game room while also having that weird creepy feeling of any stereotypical basement that you would see in a horror movie. They were alone down there though and could watch random stuff while just talking to each other and they did.

Ben usually laid his head down on her lap and Rey would stroke his hair absent mindedly as her eyes roamed the room. Sometimes Ben would wonder what she was looking at so intensely, but he never asked. He wondered if she would talk about ghosts or not.

She hadn’t in a while, she was oddly quiet about that, but it was obvious that she was still seeing things. Seeing things that he couldn’t help her unsee. “Are you okay?” He asked her and she blinked and nodded silently.

“Yeah,” She told him, “I’m fine.”

He didn’t push it. She never pushed with him either. That wasn’t their thing. He just closed his eyes with his head in her lap and let himself calm down. Before he was never really great at touch, he struggled with intimacy even to this day, but when Rey hugged him, when Rey showed him the most basic soft affection, Ben would eat it all up.

__

Rey never liked the basement. It was scary down there. Things inhabited it all the time, but it was where the second TV was, and neither of them really wanted to be cuddling around Rey’s foster parents anyways. So, she braved it for Ben. When he was around, things were a little bit less scary than before. The thing in the corner that kept staring at her with big wide eyes that weren’t actually eyes and looked like pools, filed with ink, seemed a little less scary. Nothing came near her and she just had to focus on the TV screen instead.

She could be brave for Ben.

She had to be.

There were a lot of things that went down over the years that warranted Rey going into a place filled with the dead, and she absolutely hated it, but they were all places that Ben loved to go and she just had to get used to it. Used to the loudness of people talking to her all the time and screaming and giving her headaches.

Usually with Ben around, it wasn’t as bad. Speaking of headaches, she was starting to get one right now. It always started with this scratching, that she could always hear that sounded like it was coming from right behind her. Then it turned into pounding, pounding that wouldn’t stop unless she was in a room with no sound or light.

Sometimes she just started crying, because it hurt so much and apparently, she started to and Ben woke up because of it. “Hey, hey. What’s wrong?” She bit her lip and shook her head.

“It’s stupid,”

It wasn’t stupid. All the headaches and all the sudden they were talking to her again and Rey couldn’t stand it. “Hey, you look like you’re in pain so it’s not stupid. What’s going on?”

“I have a migraine, and it just—”

“Another one? You haven’t had one of those in a while,” _That I’ve told you about._

“Have you ever gotten checked out at the doctor?”

“Yeah,”

“And?”

“They say that it’s stress related and gave me extra strength Tylenol and told me to go home,” Ben nodded and sighed.

“Well, you want to go back up to your room?” She nodded and got up, Ben grabbed her hand and led her up the stairs.

It was easier to ignore the others in the room when he did that.

He always made it easier.

__

Sometimes Rey would get headaches that scared Ben, and he had no idea what to do. The best he could do is what she told him, he would take her back up to her room and then let her lay down, bring her some water and Tylenol and then let her rest until she got up. Sometimes it only took thirty minutes, sometimes it took hours. This time it took hours. Ben just laid down on the bean bag and gave her some space.

When she was ready to sit up, she did and looked over at him after yawning. “You hungry?”

“Yeah,” He said, “are you okay now?” She nodded silently and got up.

“I’ll go get us some stuff,”

“I can come with you,”

“I know you hate my parents, just sparing you the trouble. I’ll be right back.”

“Right, okay.”

Ben knew that Rey hated it when people worried about her, but he couldn’t help it. She was his only friend and every time something bad happened to her, he wished that he was there to stop it in some way. She was always there to make the bad things that happened to him better. When his mind was too crowded and he needed to just exist outside of it, Rey was there distracting him and being happy and reminding him why life was so worth living.

When Rey came back with a plate of chicken nuggets and set them down in front of him, Ben watched her. There was something that she wasn’t telling him. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he was concerned to say the least.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,”

That wasn’t the truth.

“You haven’t talked about ghosts in a while,” Ben said as he took one from the plate.

“Yeah, I’m not seeing those anymore. It was stupid. Just a kid thing. I grew past that,” Ben sat there and stared at her. Suddenly he didn’t want to eat anymore.

“Rey,”

“Yeah?”

“You’re a terrible liar,”


	4. Chapter 4

“You’re a terrible liar,” Ben said, his words echoed in Rey’s head. “It’s fine, I just—you know that you don’t need to pretend with me. Right?” Rey was silent. He didn’t understand. He never would. Everything was so loud. She couldn’t deal with it. _You know he doesn’t actually believe you, right?_ “You’re seeing things right, now aren’t you?”

“Seeing things?” _He doesn’t believe you. He’ll never believe you. No one does. No one ever will._

“That’s not what I meant—I meant ghosts.”

“Do you think that I’m crazy?”

“What? No.” There was no hesitation in Ben’s voice when he said that, and that should have calmed Rey down, but it was part of her worst dreams. That Ben didn’t actually believe her, that he thought that she was a freak, but he stuck next to her because there was no one else that he could go. Her mind just treated her like that sometimes and it just made her feel so, so low. “What would make you think that?”

“It’s nothing, really. Sorry. I just—not a good day for me. You know?” Ben stared at her for a minute and Rey wondered if he bought it.

“Okay, it’s okay. I get that. Just, come here.” He set his food to the side and held his arms out. Ben was not the type of person to hug someone, but whenever Rey needed it, he was there. She plopped down in his arms and stayed there in the bean bag with him. They were silent before a minute before she could feel Ben chuckling a little bit.

“What?”

“I always forget how fucking light you are,”

“Oh, haha.” She got up, her elbow poking his ribs in the process.

“Ow, fuck.”

“Oh, you’re such a baby.” She sat in his lap and the two of them just stared at each other for a minute. She would be lying if she hadn’t said that she had thought about Ben a lot recently. He had shot up, even more than he had in middle school, and he worked out now and was starting to grow it his hair and it just showed. He looked really nice.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just realized that I don’t want to get up yet.”

__

Ben had this way of making Rey feel normal for a while. She didn’t know how he did it, maybe it was because for a little while, the monsters weren’t around when the two of them were together. They ended up staying in the bean bag for a while before Ben shifted. “My leg’s asleep.” He said. Rey scrambled off him and muttered an apology. The sun was going down, and after everything, Rey was ready to get to bed. Ben was still insistent on sleeping in the bean bag.

“You’re going to fuck up your back,” She said.

“Rey, it’s fine.”

“Fine,” She said, “but tomorrow I’m pulling the air mattress because you think that I have cooties.”

“I-I don’t think that you have cooties, it’s just, I don’t—goodnight Rey.” Rey rolled her eyes and turned her light down, laying down in her bed. Nighttime was never really a good time for her. She didn’t like it, didn’t like the fact that she could hear things. Sometimes the walls would bulge and move, and she would hear people talking. Sometimes part of her itched to get up and look around and explore, but she knew better by now.

Stay in bed, close your eyes, wait until you’re too busy to investigate. It was three thirty in the morning when she told herself that she couldn’t do that anymore, she had to get up, she had to get moving. She just couldn’t stand whatever was in her head, telling her that she had to get up.

There was something wrong with her head. There had to be. She got up, careful to make sure that she didn’t wake Ben. There were spots on the floor in her room that creaked and made lots of noise, she knew now how to avoid them. Ben had told her once that she was really good at sneaking up on people. She’d learned how to because of things like this. She could hear people talking, people that weren’t her mother and father.

They were always asleep at this time in the morning. There were always certain places that ghosts, and demons liked to hang out, demons were overly concerned with looking as human as possible, but they always, always failed. Rey had been able to tell when they were there, and they had tried to hurt her, but she had always managed to escape without anything happening.

A stroke of luck, she guessed. _Come closer._ Something was whispering to her, calling her name, and usually she could resist it, but on bad days when she couldn’t, she had to scratch that itch of curiosity. Down the stairs she went and there she saw someone very familiar, a tall, pale and wrinkled man who had skin that reminded her of the texture of a rotting tomato. _Come closer, child._ Rey took another step down the stairs, planting her feet firmly on the ground before stopping. Something told her not to trust the man in front of her, she did not ask his name, just stared at him up and down.

She remembered seeing a documentary on exorcists, they talked about not talking directly to ghosts’ demons unless you were skilled in the art of exorcism. But this one was something else. Something new. Someone that she had never seen before. “What are you doing here?” She did not ask it’s name, she knew better than to give it that power.

_I’ve been trying to find someone to talk to for years,_ the man said, _you just so happen to be the first person I’ve come in contact with who can see and hear me._

“What do you want from me?” Her voice was smaller than she wanted it to be, and she hated it. The man’s mouth widened into a sharp, pointy toothed grin, and Rey had never felt so cold. Colder than she had ever felt in her life.

_You will learn soon._ With that, he disappeared. Rey wasn’t sure how she got back to her bed, but she was sitting there when Ben woke up. “Do we have to go to school?” He asked. He must’ve sensed that something was wrong because he was giving her a weird look. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s okay.” She lied. This time, he actually believed her.


	5. Chapter 5

Sophomore year didn’t really calm down for Ben or Rey. The fighting between Leia and Han got worse, and Ben started spending more and more time at Rey’s. Rey still didn’t talk much about seeing ghosts. She seemed to talk less and less as the days wore on in general though, and Ben hated seeing her regress into this shell that she barely ever got to come out of. As Rey started to regress more inwards, Ben started to grow a little more outwards. He knew that it could have been worse. He could have had no place to go. Rey could have decided that she hated him and just left him in the dust.

Instead, she put up with his bullshit took care of him when he got into fights. She helped Ben with homework, and Ben would wonder what he ever did to deserve her. There were a lot of things that Rey was good at helping with, and he loved her a lot. She was the greatest friend that anyone could have, and it just broke his heart that he couldn’t really help her the same way that she helped him.

He tried to encourage her to stand up for herself, because she got bullied at school a lot, and there were a few times when he couldn’t be there to help her. It sucked. Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night and slip out of her room, thinking that Ben didn’t hear her feet quietly touch the floor before she slipped out the door. He always wondered what she was doing but never got up to check. He always worried about her. Always.

“You need to stop worrying about me,” Rey told him. “Every time you do you end up getting hurt.” She wasn’t wrong. She was bandaging up his bloody knuckles after another fight that was lucky enough to happen off of school grounds. “I hate it,” He could see the look on her face, and he couldn’t help but feel bad. He felt like he had disappointed her, even though she didn’t say that.

“You need to stand up for yourself,” Ben told her.

“I know,” Rey said, “and I’ll try, Ben. But I really don’t like being mean to people and I’m not very intimidating, so I don’t think that it’ll work that much. But you—you need to stop getting into fights for me. It’ll get you in trouble, and you can’t really stand up for me if you’re in in school suspension or worse, in jail.” Ben was silent, he knew that she was right, but he didn’t know how to stop fighting.

He was just so angry all the time and he didn’t have anywhere to put it. “I’m sorry,” Rey finished cleaning up his hand.

“Why are you saying sorry?” Her eyes were so wide when she looked up at him. Ben opened his mouth and then closed it. He could feel tears stinging his eyes and he gently removed his hand from Rey’s grasp and left the bathroom. Rey just stood there for a minute, dumbfounded, before moving and following Ben to her room. “Hey, what’s wrong?” She asked.

“Everything just sucks right now,” He said, “I don’t really want to talk about it. I don’t know how to,” Rey nodded, sitting down on the bed next to him. She opened her arms and beckoned him forward.

“Come here,” He fell into her arms and held her next to him like a lifeline. He started to say, “I love you.” He didn’t.

__

“Will you actually sleep in my bed?” Rey asked that night. Ben had always said no, but tonight, something was different. All he did was nod before getting into her bed.

“Are you going to sleep in jeans or are you going to get comfortable?”

“I—” He blushed, and Rey rolled her eyes and slid into bed, before turning the lights off.

“Do whatever,” She said. She heard him shift around a little before getting into bed next to her. For the first thirty minutes, he didn’t even attempt to touch her, he was keeping on the far opposite side of the bed, but then he rolled over and stayed there. Rey felt like he was going to ask something, so she asked it first, “I’m cold.” She said. “Could you—possibly—”

“Oh, uh, yeah. If you want.” He said. He moved a little bit closer and wrapped his arms around her. “Is that good?”

“Yes,” She said, “thank you. Seriously.”

“Yeah,” He told her, “no problem.” Rey could feel him relax after that, and the thing was, she did too. That was the best sleep that she had ever had that night.

__

That morning, Ben was glad that it was Saturday. He didn’t want to get out of bed with Rey. She was still asleep when he had woken up, and Ben just stared at her. She was so peaceful like that, and Ben wondered if she had slept as well as he had that night. He didn’t know how long of a time had passed between him waking up and her waking up, her eyes fluttered opened and she smiled softly. “You’re warm,” Was the first thing she said, and then she turned around and buried her face in his chest.

“Good morning,” He said.

“Can we stay like this forever?” He wished that they could.

“Sure,” They stayed like that for about an hour before Ben had to get up and go to the bathroom. He dove under the covers and put his arms around her again. It wasn’t the same as before though, she was so cold that for a second Ben got worried. She had this far off, cloudy look in her eyes before Ben said her name allowed and she turned to him and smiled. It was weird, how her temperature rocketed up to it’s normal heat in that one minute.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” She said, “why wouldn’t I be?”

“Oh, no reason.” Ben shook his head. She turned and burrowed her head into Ben’s chest.

“I’m so glad it’s the weekend.”

“Yeah, I know right.” He wished they could spend the rest of eternity like this. Unfortunately that wasn’t how things worked.


	6. Chapter 6

It was easy to feel sad and alone when you could see the dead and no one else could. Rey had gotten used to the feeling. The feeling of being sad and alone. By now, she accepted the fact that this was something that she would always be dealing with, as long as she walked this Earth. She got good at hiding her sadness and putting on a smile whenever someone would ask her if she was okay. Even Ben seemed to not notice how fucking scared she would get sometimes, which she was glad for because she had enough to deal with at the moment.

She did start spacing out a lot more though, because it seemed like spirits started talking to her individually. Instead of just shouting, or constantly whispering at her in a monolithic group. Ben noticed that she got a C on one of her English tests and asked her, “Are you okay?”

“What?” She shoved the paper in her bag.

“You never get Cs on anything, Rey. Come on. You’re always perfect in school.”

“What’s going on?” Rey wasn’t in the mood to answer, so she elected to avoid the question by not answering at all. And leaving Ben wondering what was going on while she finished writing whatever outline they were supposed to be working on.

When she started walking home, Ben walked beside her, quiet for a while before he said, “Did I do something wrong? Are you mad at me? What’s going on?”

“I’m tired,” She said, her voice cracked a little, “can’t I just be tired, Ben?”

“I guess, but I can tell that’s not all that’s going on with you. You know that you can tell me what’s going on right? I won’t judge you.”

“Ben,” Rey said, “a lot is going on okay? I don’t know how to explain it really. That’s just the way it is.”

“Rey,” Ben was still walking beside her. He stopped talking though, it was clear that he didn’t know what to do or say.

They went to her house in silence, and Rey thought that she could ignore everything that was going on but Ben had a different idea. “Okay, are you going to tell me what’s going on now or not?” She forgot just how persistent that he could be. Rey laid her head back on her pillow and closed her eyes.

“Ben,”

“Yes,”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Fine,” She sighed, “they’re getting worse. Okay?” She felt tears sting at her eyes and she told herself that she would absolutely not cry. She got so frustrated at herself sometimes for being so sensitive to everything, but she didn’t know how to make it stop. She didn’t know how to make herself stop crying. God, Ben must think that she was so embarrassing. Or a child, really, because she cried all the time and followed him around like a puppy dog. He was going to leave—

“Rey,” His voice was so soft “Breathe,”

She nodded and took a deep breath in and then out, “Now look at me.” When she opened her eyes he was on the bed right next to her, looking down at her with those sweet sad eyes of his. “I’m sorry that they’re getting worse. Why didn’t you say anything about it?”

“Because,” She said, “I didn’t want you to judge me and leave me, because that would hurt more than anything and then I wouldn’t have any—”

“—First of all, I’m never going to leave you,” He sounded almost mad when he said that, and Rey wondered if she had done something to piss him off. She felt so annoying. “Second of all, I will never judge you for anything, Rey. You are literally my best friend I would never do that okay, so stop thinking like that.”

“I’m sorry,” She said, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.”

“Woah, woah, woah, I did not say that at all. You’re literally perfect, how could you say that about yourself?” Rey stopped talking.

“I’m far from perfect,”

“You’re perfect to me,” He said, “you make me happy. You’re funny and kind and compassionate and you put up with my bullshit all of the time, I would be stupid to leave you.”

Rey sniffed and sat up next to him, tackling him into a hug. She wished that she could just collapse into him forever. He was so steady and solid and quiet, like a safe harbor that she had been searching for for such a long time. That night, Ben and Rey ate dinner with her parents in silence and then went back up to her room. Ben laid in bed with Rey when he said, “What is seeing a ghost like? I’ve never seen one, so I don’t know.”

Rey was quiet for a minute before she spoke, choosing her words carefully. “It’s weird, a lot of people say that it gets really cold before they see a ghost, but sometimes, a lot of the time actually it’s been the opposite for me. Sometimes I get kind of hot, really it just starts with a weird spike or dip in temperature. And then you just go numb, and it’s hard to move and you get super fixated on this point, and then the ghost appears. It’s like when football players run through massive banners and tear the paper away, but slower than that, and with thicker paper, and that’s how they materialize. And then your heart rate picks up and you’re so scared that you’re just paralyzed. And then they’re gone. That’s what it’s like to see a ghost.”

Ben was silent for a while, and Rey wondered what he was going to say. Finally he spoke, “Do you see stuff when you’re with me?”

“Most of the time, no. When we’re like this and I’m happy, no.”

“That’s good.” He said. He pulled her a little bit tighter. “I wish I could protect you more,”

“You can’t protect me from everything, Ben.”

“I know,” Ben looked down at her, he looked really really sad, “but you’re important to me and I hate to see you so sad all of the time.”

This is exactly why she didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t want to worry him, “You help me. I promise.”

“Good.” He said. They were so close that for a moment, Rey wondered what his lips felt like, but he looked away and Rey burrowed herself in his chest.

“We should sleep,” She mumbled.

“Yeah, you’re right. We should sleep.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Verbal Abuse, Broken Bones

Rey felt guilty when she wasn’t happy around Ben. Because she knew that things could be worse, and he really worried when she wasn’t doing okay. She put on a smile and pretended that she had a good amount of sleep, in reality she was exhausted. She’d spent another night up again, terrified out of her mind of the spirits that tried to claw their way into her room. This time, one of them had left their mark on her, scratches appearing on her arm and causing her a little bit of irritation as she went from class to class. Ben seemed to notice that Rey was uncomfortable as he walked alongside her, “You doing okay?” He asked her.

Rey smiled, trying to keep her cool and not worry him, “Yeah.” She said. Ben nodded and the two of them went from class to class. Rey tried her best to pay attention to everything going on in class, she really hated those few weeks when her grades really took a dip. It hadn’t made her feel good. She was sure that this time it would be okay. She took notes and did her assignment and although she was tired and she was sad, she was okay enough to focus on her schoolwork.

It wasn’t until after the day was over and Rey and Ben were walking alongside each other that Ben glanced over at her and nudged her with his elbow, “Hey,” He said.

“Hey, yourself.” Rey looked up at him and smiled. He was looking at her with the most serious look on his face though. “What’s up?”

“You know that you can tell me when things aren’t okay, right?” Rey felt a little bit sick to her stomach and looked down at her feet as she continued to walk.

“It was that obvious, wasn’t it?”

  
“Rey, we’ve been friends since elementary school. I can tell when things are wrong. So, what’s going on?”

Rey shifted a little and then pursed her lips, “It’s nothing really,” She said, “just couldn’t sleep.” She couldn’t help but feel like she was lying. Because it wasn’t nothing. Her eyes still hurt from crying last night, but she didn’t want to tell Ben that. She didn’t want to be a burden to him when he already had so much going on in his life.

“I’m sorry,” Ben told her.

“It’s fine,” Rey said.

Ben was quiet for a moment before he said, “My mom gave me some money. So uh—you want to go out and get something to eat.” She thought about the alternative, of going back into a house that she hated so much. She bit her lip and nodded, a smile forming on her face.

“Come on,” He said, “I’m fucking starving.” They started walking down the street, there was a few fast food places about a mile away from the school, both of them were willing to walk the distance.

It was made better when Ben grabbed Rey’s hand though.

Rey hadn’t expected that, but their fingers laced together as they walked, and Ben seemed to be holding Rey like he was holding onto her for dear life. Part of her wanted Ben to bring her hand up to his lips and kiss it, but she doubted that would ever happen. It was pretty clear that Ben looked at her as a friend, maybe even a little sister, and she wouldn’t ever be anything else besides that. Right?

__

Every once and a while Ben Solo had moments when he wondered how Rey was the most beautiful woman on the face of the Earth, and this was one of these moments. The two of them were walking together, hand in hand, and the sun wasn’t totally oppressive today. It surrounded them both in a soft glow and it made him notice just how much he loved the freckles that were smattered across her skin. He wished that her eyes just weren’t so sad though.

He wished that he could do something to make it better.

Anything.

The first place that they ended up hitting was a McDonalds, and Ben knew that Rey already looked tired and didn’t want to walk any further, so he said, “Let’s stop in there.”

“Okay,” Rey nodded and they both ducked inside. Rey was the type of person that got hungry really easily but also got full just as quickly, he just got them both chicken nuggets to share, and when Rey went to sit down, he also ordered her a cookie.

The look that was on her face when Ben presented her with a cookie was priceless. “Thank you,” She grinned as she practically tore into her chocolate chip cookie, and she looked really happy. That made Ben happy.

The rest of the day was spent with them just walking around, both of them really not wanting to go back home. “I’m glad that we don’t have any homework today,” Ben said, “I really don’t want to focus on anything.”

“Honestly? Neither do I,” Rey said. The two of them were walking, hand in hand again. They only started heading to Rey’s house when it started getting a little bit darker. Rey’s grip on Ben’s hand tightened, and he wondered if she was okay. She kept looking around like there was something wrong. He knew that she got upset when he asked about that though, so he didn’t.

What he did say was, “Hey. We only have five more minutes to walk,”

“Yeah,” Rey said. “You’re right.”

When they got to Rey’s house, her foster parents weren’t there, which Ben found as a relief. He fucking hated them with a passion, and it seemed that every single time he had to talk to them, he wanted to punch them even more. Rey and Ben went up to her room and closed the door, and once they did, Rey seemed to calm down a little.

“Are you okay?” Ben asked her.

“I don’t like being out at night,” Rey said.

“Hey, you’re safe now, okay?” He felt bad for not telling her that they should go home sooner. He just got caught up in the moment of being with her.

“Yeah,” She said. “Could you sleep in my bed tonight?”

“Sure,” Ben nodded. He kicked off his shoes and reached in his backpack. He kept a spare shirt and pair of sweatpants in his backpack now. That way he didn’t have to go home more often. His parents were fighting more and more and didn’t seem to notice that he was gone that often, so it was just easier this way.

He went and got changed and came back, Rey was already making some room for him on her bed. Rey just seemed to fit naturally in his arms, and even though he wasn’t really one for hugging and cuddling or physical affection at all, he knew that Rey liked it and it made her feel better, so he wrapped his arms around her and closed his eyes.

Both of them were tired enough to fall asleep this way.

__

When Ben woke up, his mother was calling him. “Where are you?” Was the first thing that she asked when Ben picked up the phone.

“I’m at Rey’s,” Ben said. He was still groggy when his mother started chewing him up.

“Okay, are you dating this girl or something because you’re barely ever here and there’s clothes missing from your dresser.” Rey was on the bed, staring wide eyed at him as he rolled his eyes and mouthed that his mother was on the phone.

“How do you know that clothes are missing from my dresser? You hardly ever come up to my room as it is and I do my own laundry.”

“Ben—I want you to come home right now—”

“Have you and dad decided to stop fighting for ten fucking minutes or are you still going at it like you have been all week?”

“Ben!”

“What? It’s a fair question. You two shout at each other all of the time instead of trying to fix the fucking problem and I’m tired of it! You guys pretend like it doesn’t affect me, well it does! Why do you think I’m over here all the time? Rey is my best fucking friend and actually cares about my happiness unlike you guys.” Rey placed her hand on Ben’s shoulder and rubbed it a little. Ben was starting to get tense.

“How dare you accuse me of not caring about your wellbe—”

“I’m not accusing you, I’m just stating the facts.”

“Ben, your dad is at a hotel.” Ben bit the inside of his cheek so hard he thought he was about to draw blood. “We’re taking a break,”

“You’re finally getting a divorce?”

“No,” Leia said, “no. We’re just taking a break from each other. A breather. And I don’t like being at the house alone, so I was hoping that I could spend some time with my son,” He took in a shaky breath and then let it out. He wanted to cry if he was being honest.

“I’ll think about it,” He hung the phone up after that and flopped back onto the bed.

“What was that?” Rey asked.

“My dad’s at a hotel and my mom wants me to come home,”

Rey knit her brows in concern and laid down next to him, “Do you want to go home?”

“I don’t know,” Ben said tersely. “I miss when my parents would get along, and we’d do shit like go to baseball games and all of that. I don’t even like baseball games but I just miss when we did stuff as a family. But going home now—it’s really bad. Really bad. Even when the moments are good and we try to do things together, they’ll find any reason to criticize each other and to fight and I hate it, I hate that when they fight everything else around them is invisible and they don’t realize that they’re really hurting me in the process too,”

Rey was silent for a while, just hugging him. “If you don’t want to go home right now, you can stay here.”

“The thing is—my mom’s at home alone and I know that she’s upset and I know that she annoys the shit out of me sometimes, but I hate it when she’s sad.”

“Then maybe you should go home,” Rey said. “It’s the weekend anyways and I think that if she’s home alone maybe you two could have some bonding time and it could be good for you.” Ben pursed his lips.

“I don’t know,”

“If you’re worried about me, you don’t have to be.” Rey said. “Do what’s best for you,”

“Should I? Go back home,”

“It’s not up to me, Ben. It’s up to you.” He held onto Rey really tight for a minute before he nodded and got up.

“I think I’m going to,” and then he turned and said, “can you walk home with me?”

“Yes,” Rey said, “of course.”

__

Walking home was easier when Rey was right next to him. She was talking about all sorts of stuff, just what she couldn’t wait to do later in the week and asking him if he wanted to watch a movie with her eventually. He told her that he would love that and she absolutely lit up when she heard that. Sometimes, Ben didn’t understand why Rey liked to hang out with him, he felt like he was way more annoying than he should be. But he was glad that he made Rey happy.

Making someone happy made him happy as well, they walked along the sidewalk and started getting into the richer part of town. Ben always felt bad when he saw Rey look at each house with this slightly intimidated grimace on her face. Sometimes his brain just went, _you should give her that when you’re old enough to afford a house, she deserves everything,_ and he knew that he was done for.

Other times he was pretty sure that Rey would never want a house that big, she said that it looked lonely, and she was right. Houses of that size were certainly grand and nice to look at, but they had this sort of disconnect to them. They were tucked away in their own little world.

Ben lived in one of those houses and he hated it. They got to his house and both of them stared at it for a minute, “I can never get over how big your house is.”

“Yeah, well neither can I.” The two of them stood there for a moment.

Then, Rey spoke, “I think that it’s time for you to go inside now,”

“What if we get in a fight again?”

“If you get in a fight again you can come back to my house and we can just chill and watch movies, but don’t go in there expecting bad things to happen. They will if you do that.” Ben nodded and then looked back at his house. This had never felt more daunting than it was right now.

Ben left Rey there and smiled back at her, promising that he would call later and check up on her before he knocked on the door. His mother opened the door almost immediately. She looked like she had been crying, “Ben,” She smiled, “you’re here.”

“I’m sorry for yelling at you earlier,” Leia ushered him inside and closed the door.

“No, no.” She said. “It was warranted,” She immediately embraced him in a hug, and Ben just sort of stood there because his mother had never been that type of person. “I think I need to apologize for some things,”

Thus, started a really long discussion, and at one-point Leia ordered pizza for the both of them to eat as they went over everything. Ben finally felt like he could talk about why it was so hard to be at home and his mother was actually listening, she wasn’t interrupting every two seconds to argue, she was letting him say his piece. And then she explained to Ben that both her and Han had been neglecting their parental duties, and there were a lot of issues that they needed to work on, but after they took a little break from each other, they would. “Your dad’s going to take you to the movies tomorrow,” Leia said, “he feels really bad. And I want you to know that we are going to try, okay? We really are, we just—we need time. I’m going to find a good marriage therapist and we’re going to get through it. If you need me to find you a therapist too, I can do that.”

“That’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about,” Ben told her. “I’ve been really struggling in school for a while. And it’s not just because of the fighting and all of that, um I just find it really hard to focus and stuff and um—it’s really been an issue. Basically the only reason that I’m passing any of my classes is because Rey sits down with me afterwards and basically tutors me on everything that makes sense but there’s still an issue. I feel angry a lot of the time and I’m impulsive and I hate not being able to focus on one thing or forgetting to eat and I just—it’s really frustrating and I wanted to get tested to see if there’s any medication I could take to possibly help with that.”

“Do you want to get tested for depression? Because that runs in the family,”

“Um—I don’t think that I’m depressed, really. I was thinking that maybe this was ADHD.”

Leia knotted and said, “We’ll get it looked into, okay? And I need to say sorry to your friend for taking you away from her so abruptly. Maybe she could come over later?”

“I would like that,” Ben said. “Later,”

Ben took another slice of pizza from the box and put it on his plate and his mother grinned. “I’m sorry for being such a shitty mom lately.”

“I don’t think that you’ve been a shitty mom necessarily,” Ben said, “not great, yeah. But not shitty.” Both of them giggled.

“Yeah, well I’ll take that over the alternative.” They ate a little more before Leia asked, “So, what do you want to do?”

Ben was quiet for a minute before he said, “Remember when we would do that thing where we slept in the living room and watched all of the Lord of the Rings?”

Leia grinned, “You want to do that.”

“Yeah, I’d really like that.”

__

Rey turned around and walked back to her house, almost immediately when Ben was inside his house. She was happy for him. She really was. She knew how hard it was for him when his parents were fighting, and now he and his mother were reconciling some.

That’s why this sense of dread that culminated in the pit of Rey’s stomach made her feel guilty, because she shouldn’t feel like this when Ben was happy. She should be happy too. She should really be happy.

But it was just so fucking hard. There were a lot of things that Rey hadn’t been telling Ben lately. Rey hadn’t been telling him just how bad the nightmares that she had been going. The ghosts that had been following her around, telling her and insisting that something bad was going to happen. There was on that had been around a lot lately.

His name was Snoke.

He had told her so, had tried to get her to say his name too, but she wasn’t stupid enough to do that. “You know,” He said, “people like you are destined to go to hell.” Rey took another step further away from Ben’s house as she tried to get to safety. She didn’t want to have a breakdown out in public. She was painfully aware of what the inside of a psychiatric ward was like and she didn’t want to go back. “You were touched by a demon when you born, girl. Much like me, why do you think I gravitate towards you so easily.”

Rey kept walking, this time at a brisker pace. She didn’t answer him, she had seen enough movies to know what talking directly to spirits did, she had experienced it too. Snoke’s presence was powerful, but not powerful enough to physically hurt her. That’s why he was so verbally manipulative. “Ben thinks that you’re crazy,” That’s what stopped her in her tracks. “He doesn’t believe that you see ghosts,” Snoke told her. “He couldn’t understand either. A boy like that, painfully ordinary and dull.”

That’s when she stopped, “Ben’s not dull.” She muttered.

“What was that?”

“Ben’s not dull,” She said, “you are. For thinking that would get me rattled like that,”

For a while he wasn’t there, and Rey could walk by herself and she could breathe. Tears stung her eyes as she thought about how Ben had left his hoodie at her house. If she could just get there and hold on to it, everything would be fine. Then he came back, “You never denied when I told you that he thinks you’re crazy.” Rey was about fifteen minutes away from her house.

She refused to call Ben and tell him that he needed to come get her, and she knew that her foster parents weren’t going to come get her either.

She kept walking.

“Perhaps you know, then. That he thinks you’re crazy. That he’s going to abandon you,” Rey started hyperventilating when she heard him say that. “And then you’re going to be alone again, you don’t deserve to be anything but alone though, and I think that you know that.” Rey felt like she was going to throw up, and that’s when she did.

She turned around and fought back. Rey had never fought with a ghost before, but she physically touched.

She physically touched him and pushed him as hard as she could, and for a second he looked shocked, but then he grinned that split faced grin of his and grabbed her arm. She felt cold, so cold. The sky was dark, and Rey felt like she couldn’t breathe, and then she felt her body go limp, and she was flung into oncoming traffic.

__

Ben didn’t find out that Rey was in the hospital until Monday that week when a teacher asked him to tell her that she wouldn’t need to catch up on any work when she came back. Ben tried to act like he wasn’t shocked, because he was.

Rey hadn’t texted him about being in the hospital at all.

What the hell happened?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also Rey's really fine, don't worry about her.


	8. Chapter 8

Ben wasn’t sure what to expect when he visited Rey in the hospital, and that scared the shit out of him. “I’m sure she’s fine, Ben.” Leia told him. “There’s no need to get upset when we don’t know anything yet,”

“I just don’t know why she didn’t call,” Ben said, “she told me that she would. I should’ve checked in on her—”

“Ben, honey. Calm down.” Leia sighed as she looked at whatever paperwork that she was doing for work. “It’s not your job to constantly look after her, I know that she’s important to you, but her parents are the people that should be worrying about that. Not you. Trust me, she wouldn’t want you to blame yourself either.”

“You’re right,” Ben said. He was quiet for a while before he said, “I just don’t like the thought of her getting hurt.”

“I know sweetheart, and I’m glad that you care about someone that much. But she’s alive, she’s fine, and as soon I’m done here we’ll go to the hospital and visit her.”

“Can we stop at the store so I can get her something?” Leia glanced up at him.

“You really love this girl, don’t you?” Ben was silent and Leia just chuckled. “Yes, you can get her whatever you want to get her.”

“Thanks.”

__

Rey had bruised three ribs and broken her leg, but other than that she was fine. She was going to go home soon, but the problem was that she didn’t react well to some of her pain killers, so they were switched out and she was given something else to try instead. And she couldn’t remember what the name was but it was strong, so strong that it was hard to open her eyes at the same time. On the plus side, she couldn’t see any of the dead people that were so often bothering her.

Her mother and father tried to insist that she threw herself in front of the car, and that she needed to go back to the psychiatric ward, but Rey had been given a test to see what her mental capacity was like, and she passed it.

Which she was relieved by, because if she was being honest, she really didn’t want to go back to that place. She didn’t want to take medication that she didn’t need to take. She just wanted to be with Ben. She hadn’t checked her phone in a while so she was really surprised when Ben came in the room, she had almost been asleep when he came in. He knocked on the door and she opened one eye, “Hey.” He said. He looked around the room. “Where’s your parents?”

“I don’t know,” She shrugged, “don’t really care either. Hi.” Ben came closer and she opened her other eye.

“Hope I wasn’t interrupting anything. Like a nap or something.”

“No,” Rey said, “you aren’t. Even if you were, I wouldn’t care,”

Ben smiled and said, “How are you doing?”

“I’m pretty banged up but all things considered I’m rather dandy,”

“So what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how did you end up in a cast?”

“And with three bruised ribs,”

“Holy shit, Rey—three bruised ribs?”

“Yeah,” Rey said, “pretty badass if you ask me.”

“Yes, definitely.” Ben eased back into his chair right next to her bed. “But what happened? And why didn’t you call me?”

Rey was silent for a minute before she said, “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Yes, I will.” Ben said. “I always believe you,”

More silence.

“There’s this spirit that I keep seeing,” Rey said, “his name is Snoke. And he’s really mean and says awful things all the time and I just—I usually ignore him but the other day he was just getting really hateful and he made me cry and I uh—I pushed him.”

“What?”

“You see, I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Rey, I never said that I didn’t, did I? It’s just—that’s never happened before, right?”

“No,” Rey said, “but I connected with him like he was a solid person and everything. He was really—cold and everything. He seemed shocked that I did that too, and then he picked me up and threw me like I was some sort of ragdoll or something, that’s all I really remember.”

“Holy shit.” Ben was quiet for a second. He didn’t know what to say at this point. “I’m sorry that happened, that sounds terrifying.”

“It could’ve been worse,” Rey said.

“How could it have been worse?”

“I could’ve died,” Rey shrugged. “I didn’t. I say that’s pretty neat.”

“Yeah, well I’m glad that you didn’t die. I would’ve been really sad,” His tongue felt dry even thinking about that. He didn’t want to talk about that anymore. “Devastated really,”

“Awe, well.” Rey closed her eyes again because she was getting tired. “I wouldn’t want to make you sad.”

“Yeah,” He paused, “why didn’t you call?”

“I didn’t want to ruin your weekend,” Rey said, “and also the medication I was taking made me really sick and I couldn’t look at my phone.” He made an exasperated sound, and Rey knew that he was frustrated. She had to keep herself from saying sorry, because she knew that frustrated him as well. It was just that sometimes she felt like a burden.

“I know, I just feel bad that you’ve had to spend all this without any company.”

“I’m not much company now,” She admitted.

“What are you talking about? You’re a delight to be around,” Rey giggled a little as she listened to Ben’s low chuckle. “Oh, also I brought you something.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” He said, “let me go get it. Close your eyes.” She did as asked and waited, when Ben came back and told her to open her eyes, she gasped.

In front of her, she saw the most adorable stuffed bunny that she had ever laid eyes on. “Oh my goodness,” She said. “I love it so much.” Ben gave it to her, and she squeezed it hard. “Thank you.” She told him.

“You’re welcome,” Ben said. They talked a little more, Ben told her about his parents and everything going on and she seemed so happy that he had made up with Leia. And then he could tell that she was getting tired so he told her he was going to go.

“Oh, okay.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow after school though, okay?”

“Okay,” Rey said, “I’d like that.” Her eyes were getting heavy as she clutched her stuffed animal. She would never tell him that she cried a little when he left.

__

When Rey got back home, her parents brought up the fact that they worked constantly and needed someone to take Rey to school, because she would get bullied relentlessly if she had to use the bus. Leia said that she would take her and Ben to school while Rey’s leg was healing, and when her mother offered her money, Leia said. “Why didn’t you take their money?” Ben asked her.

“Those are the type of people who will hold anything against you, I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to pull something if I accepted their money.” She wasn’t wrong.

Rey’s parents sucked.

Ben hated them.

Rey was in a cast and struggling with her book bag and they didn’t help her at all, just stared at her as Ben came to the door in the morning, “Let me.” He said, and took the bag from her.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Rey said.

“You’re already struggling with your crutches, so of course I have to do that.”

“Still,” She blushed a little and got down the first few steps before she got the hang of it and started to speed up. “I need to go get an elevator key when we get to school, can you help me?”

“Of course,” Ben opened the door and put her book bag in there and then watched as she got in before closing the door for her. He could tell that she was a little bit nervous about Leia. Ben had told her about some of the things that she had said and the apprehension on her face from that was pretty evident.

“Hi,” Leia said. He hadn’t seen his mom that cheery in a while. “How are you doing, Rey?”

“I could be worse,” Rey said, “just tired.”

“Well I’m glad that you’re feeling better.” She started taking the both of them to school and Ben looked back at her from the passenger seat.

“Oh by the way, your teachers aren’t going to make you do any of the work you missed.”

“That’s good,” She said. Leia let Ben and Rey talk and then said goodbye when the both of them got out of the car. He was glad that she didn’t try engaging Rey in more conversation. She’d been retreating inside her shell a lot lately and that might’ve freaked her out.

“You ready?” Ben asked her.

She gave him a nervous smile as he continued to hall her book bag as well as his own. As he watched her walk, he wondered how long exactly this ghost thing would go on. If they would continue to get more powerful and if they would try to hurt her again. He told himself that he wouldn’t let anyone try to hurt her again.

He’d figure out a way to protect her.

He had to.


	9. Chapter 9

The one upside of breaking her leg was that Ben seemed to dote on Rey even more than he did before. Rey would be lying if she said that she didn’t like it when Ben paid attention to her. She really loved it. Right now, Rey was studying, and Ben was right next to her. He had made sure that she had enough pillows to elevate her leg and told her that if there was anything that she needed, he would get it for her. Rey kind of liked the way that he looked at her when he said that, like he was so intense.

Finally, after an hour of studying, Ben closed his book and said, “Fuck this.”

“You know, normally I would say that we should probably try to do this a little longer, but I agree.” Rey closed her book and Ben took it from her and put it on her desk. “I’m bored,”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,”

“I brought my computer if you want to watch a movie or something, that way we don’t have to go downstairs.” Rey smiled a little. “We don’t have to do that, though. Whatever you want.”

“I’d love that,”

She liked being close to Ben mostly. He situated the laptop and they pulled up some shitty Netflix original. Rey leaned her head on Ben’s shoulder and just stayed like that for as long as she possibly could. Things were good like that. She wished that it could stay like that.

__

Ben wanted to ask her about ghosts. About the things that she saw. He didn’t know how to. He’d been over to Rey’s house basically every other day since she got out of the hospital, and he wasn’t sure how to approach the subject. It seemed like Rey knew though, because after she had come back from a doctor’s visit and told him that she would be getting her cast off in a few months she got really quiet, and then said, “You wanted to talk about something.”

Ben was silent for a moment before speaking, “Uh, yeah.” He wasn’t really sure what to say or how to say it. “I wanted to ask you about—ghosts.” Rey tensed up and Ben’s heart skipped a beat. The last thing he wanted to do was upset her. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. It’s whatever,”

“What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you want to tell me, really.” Ben said. “I just want to know how to help, how to make it better.” Rey nodded and sighed. “When did you start seeing them?”

“As early as I can remember,” Rey said. Ben was silent as Rey closed her eyes; he could tell that the memory was painful. He had half a mind to tell her to forget it. “There would just be these things—that I couldn’t really comprehend, that would happen. At first I didn’t really see them, but I could feel them. You know the way you can be in a room full of people, but they’re all standing behind you so you can’t see them?”

“Yeah,”

“It was like that,” She said. “It would get really cold in the room, and I would just feel things there and I couldn’t do anything about it so I would cry, a lot. That’s why no one really wanted to adopt me, because I was just—really sensitive, and no one really wanted to deal with that. I get it, though. I don’t think I could deal with that either. Being a burden to someone else like that,” Ben was about to open his mouth and tell Rey that she wasn’t a burden, but she kept going, “I remember the night I first saw a ghost, I was in a foster parent’s home and uh—he wasn’t the nicest man ever. I was in my room with the door locked because I was scared of him. I was about seven I think, I don’t really remember that well. But uh—I was in my bed, trying to hide from him, and all of the sudden there was in this girl in my bed next to me. Her head was dented, and her skin was really pale and her eyes were glossed over. She told me that I had to get out of there, or I would end up like her. I was so scared that when he got drunk and tried to knock down my door, I took this really big book that I had and threw at the window, I broke the window and then escaped. I was missing for probably a week? I don’t really remember all that well, I just remember that this really nice old lady found me and told me that everything was going to be alright. She made me pie and got me new clothes, I wished for a long time that they had allowed me to stay with her, but they found me and took me back in. Apparently that guy was investigated and had killed a girl before me and he covered it up.”

“Oh my god,” Ben’s voice was shaky, “that’s so fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Rey let out a low chuckle, “It really was. But I tried not to let that fuck with me, you know? Because if I did, I think I would’ve turned out so much worse than I am right now. So, I was moved to a girl’s home because of my mental issues. I really tried to make friends with people, I really did, but no one wanted to be my friend.”

“Well they were stupid,”

Rey smiled softly and glanced up at him, “Then something really weird happened. I don’t know how to explain it really, but uh—there was this really big storm, and all of the lights in the house I was in went out, and all of the sudden, people kept saying I was missing when I was there. Everyone went looking for me, but I was screaming and shouting people that I was right there. It was like no one saw me, I was invisible. It was one of the worst things that I ever had to experience. It lasted for three days, and this is where you come in. But you don’t know it, I was walking down the street, not really knowing what to do with the fact that literally no one could see me and then I saw you, across the street with your dad. You stopped and looked at me. It was just a glance, and I don’t think that you really remembered it but you saw me. You were the first person that really saw me,”

Ben didn’t know what to say to that. He thought for a second, that he might cry. He was a little bit embarrassed, but not enough to turn away. “I don’t see how anyone couldn’t see you, you’re the most beautiful person in the world.” Rey blushed and looked away.

“You’re sweet,” She said. “You give me way too much credit in that department though,”

“What are you talking about?” Ben said. “You’re literally beautiful,” The small smile that was on Rey’s face was one of the cutest things that Ben had ever seen in his life.

“Well, I’m glad you think so.” Rey said. “I guess that’s all that really matters, right?”

“I mean, you need to think that you’re beautiful too, but yeah basically.”

“I’ll get there eventually,” Rey said. She paused before saying, “Is there anything else that you want to know about?”

“We can talk about it later,” Ben told her, “right now I’d just like to rest, with you, if you want.”

“I’d really like that,” Rey told him. “Come here, I need someone to cuddle with me.”

__

Rey got moved up to a less heavy duty cast a few weeks later because she was recovering so quickly, and as celebration, Ben got ice cream and she stayed over. His mother had told her that she was glad that she was recovering so quickly, and Rey smiled and said thank you. She really wished that she could get to know Ben’s mother better, but she was still struggling with her shyness. She hated it sometimes because she’d be afraid to talk to people, and Ben would have to help her. It made her feel silly. “Are you still afraid of my mom?” Ben asked her.

Rey looked into her cup of ice cream and then back up at him and nodded, “A little. But it isn’t anything she did, she’s been really nice lately and I’m super grateful for everything she’s done, I just don’t want her to not like me—you know?” Ben blinked, opened his mouth like he was going to say something and then stopped. “I know that it’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Ben told her, “I understand. But—I know that she does like you, but she’s not going to approach you unless you approach her first.”

“Right,” Rey said. She continued to eat her ice cream. Ben decided to drop the subject for the moment.

“So, how’s the new cast?”

“A lot easier to walk in,” Rey said, “but I really want to have this stupid thing off now.”

“You’ll get it off soon,” Ben said, “another month. Right?”

“Yeah,” They were silent for a while before Rey saw that Ben wanted to say something else, but he didn’t ask. He just poked at his melting ice cream. So, Rey finished hers in silence, not really sure what he was going to say.

“Have you seen _him_ anymore?”

_Him._

_Snoke._

“I don’t see him unless I’m experiencing negative emotions,” Rey said, “I’ve been happy—recently. So, no.”

“That’s good,” Ben smiled and Rey’s heart melted, just a little bit. “Well just tell me if you see him, I’ll kick his ass for you.”

“How can you kick someone’s ass if you can’t see them?”

“I don’t know,” He shrugged, “but I’ll do it. I’ll find a way, no one messes with you and gets away with it.” Rey couldn’t help it when she blushed. What’s worse is that he noticed. It was a little bit mortifying when he cocked his head to the side and smirked. Part of her wanted to ask him if he knew just how good he looked when he did that—and in general. Another part of her wanted to tell him that he was full of shit, but she didn’t.

“You’re sweet,” Was all that she could manage.

“Not as sweet as you,” Ben told her.

Rey rolled her eyes, “You’re such a dork.”

“Oh, pot calls the kettle black.” Rey laughed a little too loud at that and Ben took Rey’s empty cup from her and told her that he was going to put them up, and then come back and asked if she wanted to play a video game with him.

“You could just play it and I’ll watch,” Rey said, “I don’t know a lot about that stuff so I wouldn’t be very good.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Rey said, “I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Ben shrugged, “will do.”

__

When Rey got her boot taken off, she and Ben immediately celebrated by getting a box pizza from the store and putting it in the oven at Rey’s house. Ben was right there with her when her mother said, “Sweetie, have you taken your meds today?” Ben wasn’t sure what to say when Rey look bewildered.

“Mom,” She said, “I thought I told you not to mention it around other people.”

“It’s not my fault that you need to take your meds, you’re so forgetful. I doubt that Ben cares, does he?” Ben wished this pizza was done already. “Can you please leave?” Ben asked. He was too tired to deal with this. “We’re trying to have a good day, and you’re clearly making Rey upset.”

“How da—”

“He’s right,” Rey said in a small voice, wavering a little bit. “Can you just go? And yes, I took my medicine.” The two of them bickered back and forth for a few minutes and then she left the room. Rey looked like she was about to cry.

“What was that about?”

“They want me to take anti-psychotics,” Rey said, “they found some bullshit shrink to diagnose me with something to get me pills but they didn’t get me the anti-depressants that I need. I’ve been throwing the pills out.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about that?”

“Because it’s embarrassing?” Rey said. “And fucked up and I don’t like talking about it,”

“It is fucked up,” Ben said, wrapping his arms around her. “I’m sorry that you have to deal with that shit.”

“Thanks,” Rey sniffed. It was right then that the pizza dinged, signaling that it was ready. Ben sighed and told her that he would prepare everything and then go up to her room. Rey nodded and went up the stairs. Ben was lucky enough to be fast enough to get upstairs without encountering her parents, he went upstairs with the pizza and the both of them ate in silence for a minute before Ben started talking.

“You know that I’d never judge you for anything, right?”

“Yeah,” Rey said, mouth still a little full of pizza.

“Good,” Ben ate a little bit more.

The two of them were quiet, but the tensions seemed to ease up a little bit more. When the two of them were done, Rey sat on her bed and opened her arms. Ben immediately came over and brought her into his arms. “You’re pretty amazing,” He told her.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” He said, “like super amazing. I’m glad that you’re out of that cast now, I hated seeing you uncomfortable.” He pulled back and glanced at her face. She looked so sad. “Hey, are you okay?” She bit her lip and nodded.

“It’s so stupid,” Rey sniffed a little, “I’m sorry.”

“What? Why are you sorry?”

“I just—I don’t know. I shouldn’t feel sad when you’re so nice to me all of the time, just my parents—”

“Hey, Rey. You’re allowed to feel sad, okay? Honestly, you out of everyone has more of a right than anyone to feel sad.” Rey was quiet for a minute before nodding. “Your parents suck ass, but as soon as we both turn eighteen we’re going to get you out of here so that you don’t have to stay, okay?”

“That sounds like a good plan,” Rey told him.

“Hell yeah,” He told himself that he needed to find a job, because he knew right now that if Rey got a job that was customarily given to teenagers, she’d be even more stressed out than she was already. They stayed like that for a while, and nothing bad happened. The two of them talked about what it would be like to live together, and the future, and everything that the two of them were looking forward to.

Everything was good.

Until it wasn’t.

It was around night time when Ben and Rey laid down, he was holding her when she got this distant and far off look that she so often did. Ben knew not to ask her, but something about this was different. It was dark in the room and cold, but it got so much darker at this point. Still, Ben could see everything in the room and could feel the temperature drop in an unnatural way, Rey’s breathing got a little rapid, and then he saw it.

The man that Rey had described, with the too-wide smile and the rotten face, the too-tall proportions. He was right there, at the foot of Rey’s bed, staring down at both of them.

And then he was gone. 


	10. Chapter 10

“Okay,” Was the first thing that came out of Ben’s mouth after about five minutes of silence, “What the fuck was that?” Rey was shaking.

  
“You saw it too?” She asked. She was still shaking like a leaf right next to him. The fear in her voice was undeniable and Ben wished he could act fearless for her, tell her that everything was alright and that he would protect her, but he couldn’t do that right now. He was trying to figure out what he had just seen and trying to get his heart to stop skipping four beats at a time.

  
“Y-yeah,” He said, “I saw it too.” She burrowed herself into him and didn’t say anything else. He was pretty sure that she was crying at this point. That was when Ben was able to turn more of his attention over towards her. “Was that a—?”

  
“Yes,” She said, “that was a ghost.”

  
“And does it feel like that all the time, when you see one?”

  
“Like you’re about to have a heart attack and all of your limbs are frozen in place?”

  
“Yeah,”

  
“Yeah,” Rey muttered. She looked up at him, “You really saw it? You don’t think that I’m crazy,” She sniffed.

  
“No,” Ben told her, “I don’t think you’re crazy, I’ve never thought that you were crazy, Rey. Why would you say that?” Rey just shook her head and muttered something, closing her eyes. He just held her, still trying to get his heart to steady. He swallowed the lump in his throat and closed his eyes, but he couldn’t sleep at all that night.

  
*

  
Rey woke up and Ben was still staring at the place where Snoke had been. She put her hand on his shoulder, not really knowing what she needed to do to comfort him. She knew what it was like to be scared out of your mind because of the things that she saw, but she saw them so regularly that she had gotten used to them and didn’t really know what to say right now. “Hey,” She started, “are you okay?” Ben just nodded, still staring there.

  
Rey wondered if Ben would hate her, for exposing him to this. For making him see something that was probably going to traumatize him for the rest of his life, but that wasn’t what happened. And then something happened that Rey didn’t expect. Ben turned around and hugged her. She was stunned for a minute before she heard him start crying and she wrapped her arms around him in return. “Hey,” She said, “what’s wrong?”

  
It took a minute for him to answer.

  
“I was thinking,” He said, “about what you said last night—about not thinking you were crazy—and I—did you really think that I didn’t believe you?”

  
“I—I don’t know,” She said, “I was afraid that you thought I wasn’t telling the truth and that I was insane, sometimes I thought that I was going insane too. So I was just so relieved that someone else saw him—and believed me.” Ben pulled back for a minute, his hands still on her shoulders.“Was that—the one that caused you to get hit by a car?”

  
“Yes,” She said. Ben had this look on his face that Rey didn’t know how to read. She just sat there, trying to figure out where this was going. Finally, Ben just looked puzzled.

  
“Why did we both see him?” Ben asked, “because that’s never happened to me before. So, I don’t know what—” Rey was biting her lip, trying to come up with some sort of explanation for this all.

  
“Do you think that I caused you to – see him?”

  
“I don’t know what happened,” Ben told her, “but we need to figure this out.”

  
“You’re right,” Rey said.

  
“And there’s only one way that we can do that. We need to hit the books,”

  
“Actually, we need to study for the Geometry test next week, but after that we can study stuff about ghosts.”

  
“How can you focus on school when there’s literal ghosts?”

  
“Because if I don’t focus on anything but ghosts, I would never get anything done,” Rey said, “now come on. Let’s get going.”

  
*

  
Rey and Ben studied a little but again, Ben found that he could barely even focus when there were other things at hand. Rey managed to bring him back down long enough to get a few hours of study in before they ultimately gave up and crashed on the bed again. Ben had taken to holding Rey a lot, and Rey wondered if that was because he wanted to make her feel better or if he wanted to make himself feel better. Either way she couldn’t blame him, she liked it when he held her. Sometimes, she wished that he would hold her longer. 

  
She knew that not all her wishes could come true though. 

  
They start to pour over research that Ben seems a lot more invested, looking into demons and ghosts and spirits and the occult, and why mediums existed. It was hard to find out what was true and what wasn’t at first, but Rey could tell that a lot of these people claiming to have seen a ghost had never seen one before. 

  
Finally, she came over an article that interested her. It wasn’t entirely related to the reason that Ben saw Snoke along with her, but more as to lore on how mediums and psychics existed in the first place. “Er—Ben,” She said. 

  
“Yes?” 

  
“This article,” She said, “it explains why I might be—the way that I am.” Ben looked up from what he was doing and at her face. Rey was pretty sure that he could tell that she was upset, because all of the sudden he was right next to her asking her what it said. Rey looked down at her phone and said, “It says that there’s two explanations. Either my mother was a literal dark witch, which I don’t think is very likely, or my access to being able to see the spirit world is because of witnessing a tragedy.” 

  
The both of them were silent for a minute and then Ben said, “I mean, your parents left, and I know that your current family isn’t that great. Is there anything else that happened—” Rey just nodded. 

  
“Before I came here,” She said, “it was bad.”

  
“You don’t have to tell me if it will bring up something triggering for you,” He said. 

  
“Just—I was at a group home for a while when I was too little to really understand anything, and I don’t really remember it but I looked it up a year ago and it turns out that I was one of only four girls that survived that place because the woman in charge killed all of the other girls. And then I looked up the other three girls and none of them lived very long. One girl killed herself a month ago, another got hit by a car, the other one got cancer and died. Each one had a history of mental illness, but I never saw anything saying that they explicitly saw ghosts.” 

  
“Oh my god,” 

  
“Yeah.” 

  
Ben was silent for a long time before he just hugged Rey again. Rey was just staring at her screen, she didn’t blink and her eyes started to water but she didn’t cry either. She just felt numb at this point, like what was the point of all this. “But I don’t get it?” She said eventually. “If people who witness a tragedy can become mediums, why not everyone who witnesses a loved one die or a car crash?” 

  
“I don’t know,” Ben said, “but we’ll figure it out. I promise.” 

  
*

  
Junior year for Rey and Ben was weird. Ben hadn’t seen Rey all summer and he had been informed that she was back at a mental facility, but her parents wouldn’t elaborate much on why or what had happened. It just seemed like Rey had completely vanished, she didn’t contact him at all, and Ben couldn’t contact her. Leia had even tried to get in contact with her and at least get her location to make sure that she was okay, but she had no luck either. 

  
Ben couldn’t even enjoy the fact that his parents had started going to marriage counseling and were living under the same roof again. They were so happy to be actually functioning as a family and even though it wasn’t perfect, it was a lot better than it had been, and the whole time Ben was thinking about Rey, and just worrying about her. 

  
The first day he was back though, she was there in a seat right next to him. Her hair was longer than him and she was wearing a large grey sweater and sweatpants. Rey gave him a small smile and then avoided his gaze for the rest of class. When the two of them left the classroom, Ben nearly tripped over himself as he tried to keep up with her. “Rey. Rey—did you—Rey, did you hear me?” 

  
Rey stopped, and then nodded silently. “Hi.” She said. 

  
“Where have you been?” Ben asked. 

  
“I don’t really want to talk about it in school, can we do this afterwards?” 

  
“Yeah,” Ben said, “of course we can.” They still had the exact same schedule, which Ben was glad for. He was able to focus more in class now that he was medicated and could actually manage to get stuff done without getting distracted. The bullying with Rey started up again, though. Now that Ben hadn’t been threatening to punch every person that looked at her wrong, but this time it was different. 

  
“Hey, Carrie.” Someone said. “I heard you were in a psych ward over the summer. Are you hallucinating again?” Usually, Rey wouldn’t say anything and would just take it, but Ben could see her clicking her pen incessantly. “Did you hear me? Or are you deaf as well as insane?” 

  
“I don’t know, Derek.” Rey bit back. “Are you as stupid as you are ugly?” 

  
Some of Derek’s friends laughed, it was clear that he was not amused though. “That wasn’t funny.” 

  
“To be fair neither was your lame attempt at an insult,” She turned back to her work and kept working. Ben had never been prouder in his life. The rest of class went on, and then the bell rang and granted them mercy. Derek, obviously about to try and get revenge, came over to Rey’s desk. The teacher was pretending not to see whatever was going on. Before Derek could get a word out, Rey said, “I’m sorry that your mother is having an affair with your math tutor, that must be really hard for you.” And forcefully got up from her seat and pushed past him, starting to go to the door. 

  
“How the fuck did you—you’re insane.” 

  
Ben followed Rey, speechless as she left the room. “Okay, what just happened? How did you know that about his mom?” 

  
“Ghost of his grandma told me,” She shrugged, “and I’m tired of people walking all over me.” 

  
Ben had so many questions. 


End file.
